by Raymond Ibrahim • Jul 23, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Cross-posted from Jihad Watch

Sheikh Burhami: No to transporting Christians to churches
Dr. Yassir al-Burhami, a prominent figure in Egypt’s Salafi movement and vice president of the Salafi Call—the same sheikh who seeks to punish Muslim apostates, condemns Mother’s Day, and advocates deceiving Israel—has just issued a fatwa, published in the “Voice of the Righteous Salaf,” forbidding Muslim taxi-drivers and bus-drivers from transporting Coptic Christian priests to their churches, which he depicted as “more forbidden than taking someone to a liquor bar.”
This analogy, of course, does not begin with Sheikh Burhami, but traces back to some of Islam’s early giants, including Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, who agreed that “building churches is worse than building bars and brothels, for those [churches] symbolize infidelity, whereas these [bars and brothels] represent immorality.
The logic is simple: It is better to profess Islam and be immoral, than to profess Christianity—for the latter denies the veracity of Islam, and hence is much more abominable. In this context, the Muslim who transports a priest to his church where he will preach Christianity—a message that contradicts Islam—is a terrible crime.




Raymond Ibrahim is a Middle East and Islam specialist and author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). His writings have appeared in a variety of media, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, Middle East Quarterly, World Almanac of Islamism, and Chronicle of Higher Education; he has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN, PBS, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, NPR, Blaze TV, and CBN. Ibrahim regularly speaks publicly, briefs governmental agencies, provides expert testimony for Islam-related lawsuits, and testifies before Congress. He is a Shillman Fellow, David Horowitz Freedom Center; a CBN News contributor; a Media Fellow, Hoover Institution (2013); and a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow, Middle East Forum . Ibrahim’s dual-background -- born and raised in the U.S. by Coptic Egyptian parents born and raised in the Middle East -- has provided him with unique advantages, from equal fluency in English and Arabic, to an equal understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets, positioning him to explain the latter to the former.